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Monday, February 28, 2011

Most people in the US would probably not have any clue where Bhutan was if you asked them. Heck, if you didn't mention that it was a country, they might not have any clue at all what you were talking about. So for the record, Bhutan is a small Asian country on the eastern end of the Himalayas, bordered by India and China. It is remote and difficult to get to, and that's just if you can afford to pay for the $200 a day tourist tax. It is probably best known for the fact that instead of Gross National Product, Bhutan measures Gross National Happiness. It is also occasionally known for the fact that for many years it did not have television (it does now). Despite these charming (from a Western perspective) eccentricities, it is still a largely unknown country to the average American. But for those of us with a taste for the off the beaten path, it is a place that holds immense appeal. And while I doubt I'll ever manage to get to Bhutan myself, reading about it is the next best thing.

Lisa Napoli was tired of her job at a public radio station in LA, burnt out aand frustrated by technology and its hold over our lives, when she met a man at a party who would change the course of her life forever. Through Sebastian, Napoli was offered an advisory position helping with Bhutan's new, emerging radio station Kuzoo FM. Despite her growing malaise with her job in the US, Napoli embraces this fantastic opportunity, takes a leave of absence from her job, and leaves for the Kingdom of Bhutan just as the country is poised on the edge of enormous changes. Transitioning from a monarchy to a democracy and from a media void to a media rich environment, Bhutan's age old traditions and feel were evolving.

Napoli captures a wonderful, sheltered land and what it feels like to be a visitor there but she doesn't shy away from the harder truths the Bhutanese are facing as well, including the Bhutanese refugees in Nepal, the pull of American music and television, and the urbanization of the young. This is not just a travelogue about the sights and sounds of a foreign place. Napoli offers up slices of Bhutanese history, delves into the changing political scene, details the importance of Buddhism in daily life, and examines the changing customs that govern life in Thimpu.

But what makes this travelogue/memoir so full is that Napoli shares as much about herself on this journey as she does about the people and places in which she immerses herself. When she sets off on her first trip to Bhutan, she is clearly searching for something within herself. What this turns out to be is a peace with who she is and what she is doing with her life. She learns to be completely comfortable in her own skin and it shows in the confidence in her writing.

Her descriptions of Bhutan are vivid and enticing. The people she meets are warm and friendly. Her own search for self is not narcissistic and annoying but matter of fact and approachable. She is clearly changed by her trips to Bhutan and the way she's described it all makes the reader want to go and grow and learn and be welcomed with open arms too. If it's possible to fall in love with a place and a people through a book, then this is the book to make it happen. People who love travelogues will rejoice in this story. Readers who enjoy going along on a spiritual striving and seeing a life transformed will thrill to this read. It is rich and well-written and thoroughly enjoyable.

Now that you are completely intrigued by the book, read an excerpt to get you started.

For information about a charity raising money to send books and school essentials to children in rural Bhutan check out Books to Bhutan.

Thanks to Lisa from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.

And finally, the giveaway! The publisher is allowing me to give away two copies of the book to US/Canadian residents. But because you all love me and I love you back (and because Lisa came to my town and was totally delightful in person--she has a gift for listening to nervous babbling, never once rolling her eyes as I chatted and chatted and chatted), I also have a signed copy of the book I picked up that I am willing to send anywhere in the world. So that's three copies of the book to give away. Fill out the form below before March 21 for your chance to win.

I can't wait to dive into the books that arrived this week (and have already finished one of them--so unheard of for me to get right on it that quickly!). They look completely varied but definitely great. This past week's mailbox arrivals:

Skipping a Beat by Sarah Pekkanen came from Jessica at BookSparks PR.When her husband has a heart attack and comes back as a different person, Julia has to decide if she wants this newer, kinder, gentler man who makes her face the realities of their pre-heart attack life together. Intriguing, no?

Chocolate and Vicodin by Jennette Fulda came from Gallery Books.I am a migraine sufferer myself so I can't imagine the horror of a headache that lasts literally years but this account of just that makes me incredibly curious.

The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky came from Leigh at Regal Literary.A fierce grandmother who has an alternate view of herself from everyone else who quails in front of her, her passive daughter, and prodigy of a granddaughter make up the characters in this lauded tale. It sounds fantastic.

As always, if you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Library of Clean Reads as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Julia and Michael have been living separate lives for a long time now. So when Michael has a heart attack and "dies" for over 4 minutes, Julia is jolted by the strength of her reaction. But that pales in comparison with her reaction to the Michael who now inhabits her husband's body. He is caring and concerned and determined to make their marriage strong and loving, like it once was. He seems to need to atone for so may things that he has done wrong, chief among them letting his wife drift away as he concentrated single-mindedly on the business that made him extremely, obscenely wealthy.

As Michael works hard to woo Julia back, he also drops the bombshell that he is selling his company and giving away all of his money. He says that he has realized that the money has never made him happy but Julia struggles with his decision and debates whether she wants a relationship with her husband at all. Small pieces of their past together (they were high school sweethearts) start emerging in this tale of marriage, love, second chances, and forgiveness. And as Julia's former life comes out, the reader understands her reluctance to trust Michael and her terror at the thought of all of the money being given away.

I had a few issues with the story, the largest being that Michael did not see that his unilateral decisions for their marriage were just that: unilateral. I know that the point was made that Julia and Michael's finances were intentionally kept separate but their life was not. The lifestyle that his money bought, the houses, the shopping, the high profile friends and acquaintances was all of a piece and his decision to give it all away without any input from Julia was still selfish even if he paid for it all. A marriage is a partnership and since that was what Michael was trying to hard to resurrect in their marriage, it was a little hard to swallow that he would go about it in such a singular way. The other biggish issue that I had was that the ending was a little overly foreshadowed. It was better than the only other alternative I can imagine given the story arc though so I can mostly forgive the predictability.

Julia, as a character, is very sympathetic. She is completely real. The massive amounts of money that she has become accustomed to having has not changed who she fundamentally is inside. She's still the poor girl from WV who is unexpectedly uncomfortable in this new world. She is a good and loyal friend who cares deeply about the happiness and lives of the people around her. She is the kind of woman who can befriend a captivating young boy playing with his dog beside a river, finding a sweet companionship in his company. She is the woman who can put on the perfect benefit or event be it large or small and who thrives on doing so. She's also the woman who has not been able to forgive her father for his gambling addiction and the effect that had on her mother, nevermind the way in which it damaged her own ability to trust. As she faces the reality of the new Michael and his desire to make up to her all the neglect and disinterest that has been the hallmark of so much of their marriage, she debates her options, never knowing herself what she is finally going to choose to do until she is actually in the moment. The reader feels her pain and confusion, understands it, even as we also understand that she still loves her husband, the man he once was and the man he seems to be trying so hard to prove that he can be again.

Ultimately the story is sweet and takes a close look at the reality of marriage, the way in which love is just the starting point to which so much other junk is added, sometimes to the point that that love is buried and obscured. Money and trust and time itself are all major issues in any marriage and Pekkanen has teased out a tale where they take top billing and she has done so with originality and sensitivity.

Thanks to Jessica at BookSparks PR for sending me a copy of this book to review, which I have done in conjunction with a blog sweepstakes.

I know I am not alone in wanting to compile a list of books to read about the places to which I travel. The month before we went to India (on the company's nickel), I had a stack of to be read books about 30 deep. I didn't get to them all then but I read quite a few. And now books set there remind me of that wonderful trip. A month before we went to Egypt (also on the company's nickel), I pulled a stack of about 10 books to read. And like the Indian books, books set in Egypt now have the lovely result of putting me back there (without having to brave the current strife). I don't just do this with international trips, having collected many a domestically-set book specifically for trips. It just seems like a fun and entertaining way to learn a little about the place you'll be, adding to the excitement before you leave, and helping to retain the good memories once you get home.

Now we're about to leave on a trip to Panama and even though we have far less than a month to go to it, I only just hopped onto my library collection on LibraryThing and confidently typed in the word Panama. Not one book matched up. I have not one book on Panama or set in Panama in my entire collection. Now if you know me in real life, you know that this is a feat almost as impressive as the building of the Panama Canal. The breadth and depth of my collection has never been in question before (mostly because I am book-greedy and have no self-restraint). But now it is. It is clearly suffering from a large and gaping hole made even more shameful because I am about to head there without having done any background reading fictional or true. I am so disappointed in myself! So, my question for you this gorgeous Sunday is what books you might suggest for me before I go? Typing Panama into amazon nets me a lot of travel guides and only a tiny handful of other books (several of which actually deal with Florida). The other books all seem to be thrillers or mysteries except for David McCullough's book The Path Between the Seas which I might just find a copy of and buy for my husband the McCullough fan and then steal back to read it myself. I'm just that kind of generous girl. Surely there are other good choices though. So hit me with them please!

Saturday, February 26, 2011

When you glance up from the road and see a couple who look familiar walking toward you, make sure and certain they are the friends you think they are before raising a weary arm and waving wildly or they will wonder who the crazy red-faced woman with flapping bingo wings waving at them is. Neighborhood humiliation is all that much worse when you look like you've been dragged fighting through a hedge backwards.

Friday, February 25, 2011

I love to read. I love food. I love to cook. So what could be better for someone like me than a book combining all of the above? Table of Contents is a collection of interviews with and recipes from 50 authors, some very well known, others not as familiar, but all of whom have written books eminently well-suited to book clubs. The authors answer the questions most readers ask about their books, they talk about their inspiration, and they offer up recipes oftentimes inspired by their characters or settings. The interviews range from the in-depth to the more cursory. The recipes too range from long-time family favorites to new dishes created especially for a character.

Book clubs who enjoy trying to match their fare to their reads will find this a gem. My book clubs don't generally do this but my copy of the book is nevertheless bristling with flags marking recipes to try. A fun concept for a book, this one will feed the stomach as it also feeds the mind, hopefully leading readers to try not only new dishes but new authors as well.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

When my dad gave eight-year old me a red leather copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, I treasured the beautiful book both for its physical appearance and for its fantastical story. As I grew older and visited Wonderland again in a kiddie lit class in college, I learned a bit about the story behind the story. Alice Liddell. The girl for whom Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland. The waif in many of the decidedly un-Victorian photographs that Charles Dodgson took. A hint of impropriety. And really that is the sum total of what I knew about "the real Alice" before I started Benjamin's fascinating novelization.

Opening with an aged Alice, immediately after the sale of her original manuscript, reflecting on her life as the inspiration for the famous nursery tale. How it has been tiring to be the object of such speculation. From thence, traveling back in time, Alice narrates her life starting with her early childhood in Oxford where her family was intimately acquainted with mathematics teacher Charles Dodgson. Alice's childhood and relationship with Dodgson are drawn in shimmering, sympathetic detail. The friendship between the adult Dodgson and the child Alice starts off innocently but eventually becomes fraught and captured through innuendo, causing a shiver of distaste, worry, or foreboding to travel down the reader's spine. The break between the Liddells and Dodgson comes without explicitly speculating on the reason behind it but suggesting, as the rumors of the day did, that there was ultimately an inappropriateness to Dodgson's relationship with Alice.

Whatever the cause, Alice Liddell did not forever remain the child Dodgson immortalized but indeed grew up and lived out a life that was certainly not the stuff of fairy tales. Benjamin chronicles Alice's adult life, the disappointments and losses as well as the late dawning realization of love and what it has meant to her to be, her whole life, "that Alice."

Using what is known for certain about Alice's life and adding in reasonable speculation, Benjamin has created a nuanced and beautifully written story. Alice is a sympathetic character. Dodgson comes off as somehow both innocent and lecherous. And the tale as a whole is not only readable but fascinatingly addictive. Having Alice narrate her own life gives a poignancy, bittersweetness, and retrospective feel to the novel as it retains the Victorian sensibility that was likely a cornerstone of the real Alice Liddell's entire life. Beautifully rendered, if you've ever wondered about Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell, wondered what life was like on this side of the looking glass, this is the book for you.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Mark Childress is funny. At least his books suggest that he is because they are chock full of fun and entertainment and I have never finished one of them without a grin on my face. This is not to say that they are shallow or mindless. It's just that they will keep you happily barreling along the pages with his wacky but delightful characters even as they touch on darker concerns; here these concerns are racism and sexuality, complacency and image.

Georgia Bottoms is keeping secrets. Her well-respected family's money long gone, she must support her aging mother and her alcoholic brother who can't seem to stay on the right side of the law as well as send what she can afford to an address out of state for reasons not immediately explained. But just how does a charming, ladylike Southern belle can go about this? Why, she discreetly takes on lovers who come to her once a week and leave her monetary "gifts" for the privilege of her company of course. Georgia manages to keep each of her lovers from knowing about the others, hide her trysts from the town and her mother, and keep up the appearance of goodness that she has cultivated for so long until the preacher's wife discovers just exactly where he has been spending his Saturday nights. The trouble headed off at the pass, Georgia resumes her life, influencing town politics from behind the scenes, organising her annual ladies' tea, and struggling against her mother's creeping dementia and increasing racism. But the dam has broken, the world has changed (9/11 happens during the course of the novel), and some of Georgia's best kept secrets are about to be exposed.

Georgia is a performer, acting a role not only with each of her lovers but also acting the role of dutiful daughter, responsible sister, paragon of Southern gentility, pillar of the community, and town darling. She really hasn't had time to figure out who she actually is and it's not until she comes face to face with her past that she has to reach down inside herself and find the kernel of the real person she actually is without regard to what others expect.

The plot here is unique and the characters are wonderful. Georgia is charming and delightful and the reader roots for her the entire story, even when she is being intentionally obtuse. Her heart is generally in the right place and the situations in her life are highly entertaining. The story and everything about it is humorous with just the right amount of sass and verve thrown in to make it incredibly appealing. The story keeps moving at a good, consistent pace and ending is about perfect. I wish we could go along with Geogia and see what's next for her. She is a steel magnolia if ever there was one. Fans of Southern fiction have a gem waiting for them in this one.

For more information about Mark Childress and the book, including an interactive tour of Six Points, be sure to visit his webpage. There's also a link there to Childress' tour schedule, which mostly canvasses the south but offers an appearance or two in Yankee-land too. I plan to go to the tour stop by me and see if he's as entertaining in person as he is on the page.

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

For me, I can't wait to read: In Zanesville by Jo Ann Beard. The book is being released by Little, Brown on April 25, 2011 coincidentally my son's 14th birthday.

Amazon says this about the book: The beguiling fourteen-year-old narrator of IN ZANESVILLE is a late bloomer. She is used to flying under the radar-a sidekick, a third wheel, a marching band dropout, a disastrous babysitter, the kind of girl whose Eureka moment is the discovery that "fudge" can't be said with an English accent.

Luckily, she has a best friend, a similarly undiscovered girl with whom she shares the everyday adventures of a 1970s American girlhood, incidents through which a world is revealed, and character is forged.

In time, their friendship is tested-- by their families' claims on them, by a clique of popular girls who stumble upon them as if they were found objects, and by the first, startling, subversive intimations of womanhood.

With dry wit and piercing observation, Jo Ann Beard shows us that in the seemingly quiet streets of America's innumerable Zanesvilles is a world of wonders, and that within the souls of the awkward and the overlooked often burns something radiant and unforgettable.

Monday, February 21, 2011

A memoir about renal failure, dialysis, and kidney transplants (multiple) can't possibly be funny, can it? This one can. It is funny and sweet and entertaining. Opening with Balcita and boyfriend/eventual husband Charlie's schtick about their matching side scars, the reader hears the patter they've developed to explain how Charlie donated a kidney to Angela. A neat deflection that answers questions briefly, avoids pity or unwanted sympathy, and keeps the fact of Charlie's donation to Angela from becoming the stuff of treacle, this thread of performance runs through each of the three acts of the memoir.

The first act tells the story of how Balcita, as an 18 year old, found herself in total renal failure because of kidney disease. It covers her life, Charlie's life, her first kidney transplant, their meeting and evolving relationship, the failure of her first transplant, and Charlie's decision to offer her one of his kidneys. The second act covers the donation and all of the emotional repercussions of it. The third act chronicles the next stage in their life together, including Balcita's overwhelming desire to have a baby despite the risks for her as a kidney transplant patient.

Without making light of the gravity of her situation, Balcita manages to infuse the memoir with a hopefulness and sweetness that allow the love that shines between she and Charlie to take center stage here. The humor almost masks, but doesn't quite, the fear and the pain that are always in the back of Balcita's (and Charlie's) mind as she monitors her health and whether her donated kidney continues to function as it should. She includes doubts and fears and misunderstandings that they faced seperately and as a couple so that they never become caricatures of real people. Their partnership is strong and enviable but it has all the normal bumps and bruises and Balcita does a good job showing their specialness but also their normality.

The book is a very quick read as readers follow along wanting to know what drives Charlie to donate his kidney, whether they will ultimately end up married, if the kidney continues to function, whether they can have a baby, and what happens when a dream, the best dream of all, jeopardizes reality. At one point Balcita says that she doesn't understand the image of giving someone your heart to represent love. In her case, the ultimate gift has, of course, been the receipt of a kidney, a literal piece of the body, the biggest declaration of love possible. Memoir readers will definitely enjoy this upbeat tale of love and family and kidneys.

For more information about Angela Balcita and the book be sure to visit her webpage.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.

Far more books arrived this week than expected, which is, of course, always a good thing. (Well, it's a good thing until I remember there are only 24 hours in a day!) This past week's mailbox arrivals:

The Beauty of Humanity Movement by Camilla Gibb came from Penguin Press thanks to Trish at TLC Book Tours.A novel of modern Vietnam about a tour guide, a young Vietnamese woman returning to the country in search of answers about her father's disappearance many years before, and an old man vital to his pondside community, this one appeals because the country of Vietnam has always held a fascination for me.

What You See in the Dark by Manuel Munoz came from Algonquin Books.I am a little worried this one, with its backdrop of the filming of Psycho, might stretch my reading world beyond its limits but then again, being stretched isn't always a bad thing. I just don't know if I can take that shower scene in written form (not that it is necessarily in the book; I'm just sayin'.)

Something For Nothing by David Anthony came from Algonquin Books.Publishers Weekly calls the main character a "lovable drug smuggler." I didn't know there was such a thing. Should be interesting to see how Anthony pulls this off!

As always, if you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Library of Clean Reads as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Clare Wingate arrives home unexpectedly only to discover her fiance in flagrante delicto with the washing machine repairman. She doesn't have time to focus on this catastrohe because she has to act as bridesmaid to her good friend so she decides to deal with Lonny and his infidelity (and sexuality) later. But later turns out to be after an extended amount of time and drinks in the hotel bar and Clare can't remember much of the rest of her evening, knowing only that she has awakened naked in a hotel room. Worse yet, it appears she has awakened in the bed of her childhood nemesis Sebastian, now a gorgeous reporter who has chased important and dangerous stories around the globe. When she assumes that the two of them slept together, Sebastian doesn't disabuse her of the idea, thinking it's rather fun to see perfect, monied little Clare flustered.

There is a reasonable amount of friction between the two characters but there is quite a lot of time spent on each of their seperate development and growth and not nearly as much as might be expected in a romance on the actual relationship and its evolution. It is interesting that Gibson chose to make Clare a romance author who can't even command respect from her mother given her choice of subject matter despite the fact that her rather over the top prose has made Sebastian hot and bothered. The story doesn't follow the traditional arc of a romance but it also doesn't work as anything other than a romance novel and so this deviation from the conventional, instead of being a strength, ends up weakening the story and leaving the eventual resolution feel a bit rushed. It is also a tad wearying that the character who is unable to sustain the concept of "friends with benefits" is Clare, causing Sebastian to panic until he realizes that he too needs more than to stay the cliched commitment-phobic male. Romance fans will likely not be ambivalent about this one, either hating it for its tepid relationship or loving it for its ability to show major change and growth in the main characters independent of each other. Personally I'm rather wishy-washy about it, appreciating the attempt but ultimately finding that the attempt created flaws that wouldn't otherwise have been as evident.

Friday, February 18, 2011

Tom Loxley is a divorced, childless, Jamesian scholar who is stalled at the end of writing his book. He takes his dog to a friend's cabin in the bush in order to find the inspiration to finish but on a long tramp with the dog, the dog runs away and doesn't return. Tom's sometimes frantic and sometimes desultory search for his lost dog then weaves in and out of the other plot threads, flashbacks all: his childhood in India and then Australia, his marriage and its ultimate failure, his sexually frustrated obsession with his artist friend Nelly Zhang, and (the only non-flashback) of his mother's aging diminishment.

There are a wealth of themes weaving throughout the tale. There's that of the immigrant and the outcast; there's familial duty and the inheritance of the past. Loss and redemption as well as desire and denial play their own enormous roles as the story builds to its climax. Despite the small action guiding the story, the search for the dog keeps the reader engaged and slightly tensed wanting an outcome even as Tom's life up until the loss of his dog unfolds slowly and with great deliberation reflecting the alternating hope and futility of the search itself.

The writing here is often times dense and rich in meaning with de Kretser showing her deftness with apt metaphors. Her descriptions are minute and startlingly accurate, a decided strength in a story with such an insubstantial plot driving the tale. If there's a weakness here, it's in the characters. Tom himself is hard to like, aimless and as stuck in his life as the conclusion of his scholarly research. Nelly Zhang is eccentric but stand-offish, even to the reader, exploiting her racial identity when it suits. And the long intervening amounts of text between when hints of mystery and understanding are dropped and when their threads are finally reintroduced into the story can induce a sense of frustration in a reader more accustomed to a straightforward writing style. But even with these considerations, it is clear that de Kretser is an accomplished and stylish writer. In the end, while I found it hard to sympathize or care for any of the characters, I wanted to know what happened to the dog, was impressed by the calibre of the prose, and amazed by the dexterity of keeping all the disparate plots going and ultimately interconnected. I look forward to reading de Kretser's other works.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book for review.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

If you have even a marginal interest in what books are generating conversation both inside and outside the publishing world, you've likely heard of Chua's controversial parenting memoir. People are outraged that she touts the strict "Chinese" parenting model, denigrates the much more laissez-faire "Western" parenting model, and holds her own very successful children up as proof that her conclusions and techniques are the "right" ones. This whole hue and cry made me incredibly interested in reading the book. And I am forced to come to the conclusion that some of the loudest voices of dissent can't possibly have read the same book I did. Certainly Chua stands by her parenting techniques but she isn't afraid to show her failures and the way in which she second guesses herself for not tailoring her parenting to better fit each of her daughters.

Chua is a high-achieving law professor at Yale. She is also a second generation Chinese-American who was herself pushed to excel as a child. As a parent, she makes the conscious decision to raise her children in accordance with the strict, demanding, and frequently unbending manner in which she was raised. And she attributes much of their exceptional academic and musical success to her insistence on routine, complete and expected obedience, and hours of repetitious drill. She holds her children to almost impossible standards and trusts that they are strong enough to hear about it when they have not met these lofty expectations. She compares what she sees as a "Western" laxity with her regimented "Chinese" methods and certainly the parenting method she didn't choose herself does come off poorly in some cases.

But Chua does have some legitimate points about the pervading culture which deems mere proficieny to be good enough instead of demanding exellence. Chua's insistence on her children spending hours practicing their instruments in order to be pre-eminent may strike people as excessive but how many parents of any stripe have spent hours standing over their children fighting the homework battle? Or have driven a child to a practice when said child whines that s/he doesn't want to go today? Or chosen a sport or an instrument for the child rather than allowing him/her a choice? Or pushed tutoring on a child? And the list goes on and on. Most of us have shades of a Tiger Mother in us. We might choose different battles and different instances in which to push our children, but we do fight those battles.

The memoir chronicles Chua's successes and failures and the high cost of both, with one daughter suited to her brutally honest, highly expectant parenting style and the other much less so. It is slightly disingenuous for Chua to claim her children's musical prodigality and academic successes result from her parenting given the girls' genetic inheritance. Both Chua and husband Jed are very intelligent, highly successful individuals and musical talent runs in Jed's family. So Chua has not been working all these years with children incapable of rising to her exacting standards. And that, perhaps is one of the biggest lessons of Chua's book: don't allow a highly-capable child to settle for mediocrity. High standards are not a bad thing. Giving trophies for participation regardless of effort is. Practice, onerous and tedious though it may be, is still the best way to get ahead.

This is an incredibly quick read and Chua pulls no punches on her behaviour as a mother but this isn't the mea culpa confessional sort of memoir we've come to expect. It does not have an apologetic tone and perhaps that is where some of the public excoriation comes in. But just as I stand by my own brand of parenting (certainly a mixture of laissez-faire and impossible standards), Chua stands by her own, mistakes and all. She says in the final chapter that her husband and both daughters read the book, making suggestions and registering their concerns so she has tried to balance her memories with theirs as best as possible. On occasion, hearing about the impressive accomplishments of Chua's daughters (as well as her own and her husband's) does get a little wearying, making it legitimate to complain this can be a rather long braggy book. But leaving out the accolades would make the account of strict parenting simply a preachy screed with tiny flashes of humility. The furor over the book might die away quickly but even if it does, it would make a fanastic book club choice. Clearly polarizing, discussions would go on for long periods as long as at least one person reads it carefully and with an open mind.

For more information about Amy Chua be sure to visit the wikipedia page about her and if you want to see the controversy swirling around this book, a simple internet search will pull up more than you need.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.

Amazon says this about the book: A long-estranged family discovers that blood is thicker than water in this hilarious and moving domestic comedy.

It's been a couple of decades since Nick cast off his impossible, contentious, embarrassingly working-class parents: gruff, stingy, explosive Ken and June, who seemed to revert to a primal state of nature after a divorce that both of them managed to blame on Nick. Enjoying the life of the country gentleman that he's made for himself with impeccably turned-out Astrid and her teenage daughter, Laura, Nick has kept only the slenderest family connection to his brother, Dave, who's stuck with the role of ambassador in a family that's long settled into cold war.

But then Ken decides that the year of his death has arrived, and thus kicks off an ill-conceived quest to reunite his family before he meets his fate. Bringing to this tinderbox just the spark it needs, Louise Dean sends up the whole clan, each of them fatally flawed yet saved by hidden grace, and illuminates with her incomparable acuity their clashes of generation, gender, class, and temperament, in a riotous and compassionate conflagration.

Monday, February 14, 2011

I was a bit of a Last Minute Louie with my reading and reviewing this week. The fact that tennis season is starting up is eating into my reading time as is the fact that kids' spring sports are about to launch. I'm usually the mom you see sitting at the edge of the field or in the auditorium with a book in hand. I don't read on the tennis court but I suspect I could and I wouldn't play any worse than I already do. Come to think of it, maybe I should read a book on tennis in hopes of improving my game! This meme is hosted by Sheila at One Person's Journey Through a World of Books.

Happy Valentine's Day! I hope all of you are surrounded by the love of family and friends, near and far, today. I personally am feeling the love for my mailman since he always brings me such a delectable array of goodies. This past week's mailbox arrivals:

The Uncoupling by Meg Wolitzer came from Riverhead Books.After seeing the play Lysistrata, the women of a New Jersey town start turning away from their husbands and boyfriends in the bedroom. Entertaining to be posting about receiving this one on Valentine's Day, but I have always really enjoyed the novels I've read by Wolitzer and this one, about women's desire, sounds like it will be just as captivating as her previous books.

The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady by Elizabeth Stuckey-French came from Doubleday.I thoroughly enjoyed the offbeat topic of Mermaids on the Moon by Stuckey-French so this story of an older woman who intends to kill the doctor who fed her a radioactive concoction while she was pregnant so many years ago but can't because she really likes his quirky family sounds like my kind of farce.

Home to Woefield by Susan Juby came from Harper thanks to Trish at TLC Book Tours.There's just something about a chicken on the cover of a book, isn't there? This seems like the novel version of those buying a rundown house/farm and changing your life's direction tales filling the biography section at the bookstore. I adore those in memoir form and I'm interested to see how I like it in novel form.

Invisible River by Helena McEwen came from LibraryThing Early Reviewers.A young woman leaving for art school and to start building new friendships leaves behind her father for the first time since her mother died. But her father shows up in her fledgling life, drunk and disheveled and she must decide what of the past moves forward into her new life. A different twist on the coming of age novel, this one sounds like a good read.

As always, if you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Library of Clean Reads as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

People walk into my house, notice the bulging bookshelves, and feel compelled to apologize for their lack of reading (after they comment on how many books I have and how I need a Kindle or a Nook but that's a whole different post entirely). It's not really their lack of reading that they are announcing but instead, their lack of time to read. I realize they don't mean it this way but it sometimes comes off as sounding as if I have the luxury of time that they, busy people, don't have. "What do you do all day staying at home?" "Eat bonbons and read, of course." For anyone laboring under the misapprehension that I am not busy, please feel free to ask my mother how often she can actually get a hold of me on my home phone (yes, we still have a landline because I am a Luddite). Don't ask her how often she reaches me on my cell though because those results will be unfair given how often it is sitting inadvertantly at home while I am not. Suffice it to say that my days are busy and full and I too have to fit reading in around the rest of my life as a lady of leisure. So in the interests of helping all of those who would love to read but just don't have the time, let me share some of my tricks with you.

1. Never leave your house without a book (or two) unless you plan to stop at a bookstore in the course of your errands. You will be happy to have something to do when you sit at long red lights, soccer practice, dance class, tennis matches, a railroad crossing, the doctor's office, etc.

2. A book is never amiss if you are meeting someone for lunch or dinner or a meeting. When they are late, you don't have to re-read the menu twenty times or stare unseeingly at the faux decor. Besides, just think how much more pleasurable it will be to sit through some interminable PTA meeting if you have just read about pirates ravishing the heroine. (Although this scenario can lead to serious pique at having so much of your tiny sliver of reading time rudely eaten up by those people who have your child's best educational concerns at heart.)

3. You can cook one-handed, thereby leaving one hand free to hold a book. Cracking eggs can get a bit messy if you are too engrossed in your book but if you choose to read something with a food theme, you'll just feel that much more a part of the story if you too are cooking as you read it. And trust me, when a recipe calls for stirring constantly, you'll appreciate the distraction of a book.

4. With only the merest amount of practice, you can walk to the bus stop (or anywhere really) while reading. You will, of course, have to relinquish the book to hear all about which child burped really loud in class, which child earned them a silent lunch, and the (not so) funny story their teacher told them all once your child gets off the bus so make the most of this time before they re-enter your day. Plus, if you are reading something great, other moms at the bus stop will ask you about the book, giving you the chance to rapsodize about it without coming across as a raging bore who only talks about books and is incapable of other small talk.

5. Turn off the tv and read instead. I know, controversial. But reading about people struggling through life is far more entertaining than watching it and you don't have to censor your books when the kids are in the room. Plus, books have no canned laugh track so they either earn your chuckles or they don't. Save your viewing only for the best of the best. That way you'll appreciate your show(s) more and you will have carved out a fairly huge chunk of reading time if you were once a mindless tv watcher just because it was on.

There are any number of other times that people who really want to make the time to read can and do read. Someone saying that they don't have the time is simply not true. What are some of your best tricks for eking out reading time?

This week I have not done a ton of reading because even I have not figured out a way to read on the tennis court but with the bit I did, I ran a vintage dress shop for my ill grandmother, I faced the moral dilemma of war and the damage it does to a marriage, and I pushed against my fate and that of many similar women to become strong and change a small corner of my village.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Images of torture and terror from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo have slid across our tv screens, jumped out of newspapers and magazines, and peppered conversations over the past number of years. How, we wonder, did we come to this, this unacceptable and horrifying state of affair? Has civilization broken down so badly that we can turn a blind eye to this sort of thing unless, and only unless, it is thrust into our common consciousness? Surely tacit approval was not granted. We can not have so lost our moral compass, especially compared to the civilized and relatively humane generations who have waged war before us, can we? Unfortunately, this isn't the case. Not that we have gone so misguided, but that the generations before us weren't just as ruthless and willing to step over the line. War is hell in more ways than one and its damages can be counted in far more than casualty numbers. Loss of innocence, moral breakdown, and silent complicity are all terrible, soul destroying by-products that have been a part of war as long as war has been a part of mankind.

Major Hal Treherne is posted to Cyprus during the 1950's and is joined by his wife Clara and their twin toddler daughters. His war is not to be the enormous consuming war of their fathers, World War II, instead, his war is to be the small war of waning colonialism on this tiny island so vital to the Middle East. He is mostly happy with his command although he longs for more important action than sweeping the local villages for EOKA terrorists. Eventually this vague dissatisfaction starts to seep into his heretofore charmed marriage. Meanwhile, his wife Clara must master herself and her fears about this posting and perhaps her very unsuitability to be an army wife, only relaxing once the family is safely housed on base.

But isolated, violent events occur to shatter the false sense of security for the Treherne family and Hal and Clara react diametrically opposite to each other in the face of these disturbing happenings. At first Hal is exhilerated and blind to Clara's fear and feelings. As he learns more though, Hal's conception of duty and his sense of right and wrong are tested beyond endurance. He is torn between his duty to his country and the men with whom he serves and his own conscience and as he struggles, his life with Clara erodes and becomes unrecognizable until both halves of him, public and private are at the breaking point.

This is a fascinating look at the psychological strain of war and how essentially good people react to it. It counts the damage to intimacy and goodness. Jones allows her characters to judge the scenes they see and hear about without much authorial intrusion at all. Her characters are strong, even when they are crumbling, and they illustrate the timelessness of those news pieces that reach us and so horrify us today. The writing is tight and well-done. The tension slowly grows as the story continues but it grows unevenly, as it would in war: longer stretches of less watchfulness interspersed with brief bursts of pulse-pounding events. The characters are easy to sympathize with as they wrestle with their duties and desires. All in all, a sensitive and powerful story and one I'd highly recommend.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

What do your clothes say about you? What if they could tell stories of the times you actually wore them? Mine would probably say I am prone to spills and dress like a toddler. But a couple of pieces might tell of evenings out or exotic trips. Mostly though, my clothes wouldn't have terribly interesting stories to tell and no one would mistake them for things with fascinating histories. In The Secret Lives of Dresses though, the vintage dresses in Dora's grandmother Mimi's shop have tales to tell, tales imagined and written by Mimi to suit each dress.

Opening with Dora rushing home from college after her grandmother has suffered a stroke, this is a story of love and grief and finding oneself. Raised by her grandmother because her parents died when she was small, Dora is about to graduate from college, where she has drifted along without a plan. She intends to go to graduate school as much to make herself available to her cute boss at the school coffee shop (as a grad student, he won't date undergrads) as to postpone having to decide what she wants to do with her life when she grows up. Mimi's stroke changes everything. Dora goes home and takes over the vintage dress shop as a way of keeping busy while her grandmother is critical in the hospital. She discovers a real affinity for the shop, tied to it both by her love for her grandmother and by a gift for retail.

Through the shop, Dora meets Cal, a contractor renovating a condo upstairs who is wonderfully kind and understanding about the grief that Dora is feeling as her grandmother's health declines. She also finds a drawer full of secret lives for the dresses on the racks at the store, tales meant to go with the dresses when they are purchased. Never having known about Mimi's writing, she faces all the things that will remain unknown in her life, including anything much about her own parents, about whom Mimi didn't speak. The supporting characters here are quirky and fun, adding light and spunk to the story without taking the focus off of Dora and her journey of self-discovery.

McKean has a feather-light touch, only brushing the reader's emotions gently while still managing to convey the depth of Dora's feelings. The premise of the book is a charming one and plays out just as charmingly in practice. It was hard to not gobble the book down in one greedy sitting but instead to let it flow slowly and steadily. It is a thoroughly modern book but the detailed descriptions of the vintage dresses and their stories give the book a lovely old-fashioned tone in places. Despite the sadness, there's a warm feel of friendliness here. Over all, this is a delightful book and anyone captivated by the idea of dresses having histories will find a small gem in this tale. Characters, plot, setting, tone; it all comes together into a perfectly pleasing whole.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book for review.

Amazon says this about the book: From incredible storyteller and nationally bestselling author Elle Newmark comes a rich, sweeping novel that brings to life two love stories, ninety years apart, set against the backdrop of war-torn India.

In 1947, an American anthropologist named Martin Mitchell wins a Fulbright Fellowship to study in India. He travels there with his wife, Evie, and his son, determined to start a new chapter in their lives. Upon the family’s arrival, though, they are forced to stay in a small village due to violence surrounding Britain’s imminent departure from India. It is there, hidden behind a brick wall in their colonial bungalow, that Evie discovers a packet of old letters that tell a strange and compelling story of love and war involving two young Englishwomen who lived in the very same house in 1857.

Drawn to their story, Evie embarks on a mission to uncover what the letters didn’t explain. Her search leads her through the bazaars and temples of India as well as the dying society of the British Raj. Along the way, a dark secret is exposed, and this new and disturbing knowledge creates a wedge between Evie and her husband. Bursting with lavish detail and vivid imagery of Bombay and beyond, The Sandalwood Tree is a powerful story about betrayal, forgiveness, fate, and love.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

So many books focus on the disaffected and apathetic middle and upper classes of society. We watch tv shows that expose the uber-wealthy. We devour gossip about celebrities and those lucky enough to be born rich. It's almost as if the poor, the disenfranchised, and the downtrodden have no voice we care to hear. And perhaps this lack of awareness is even more prevalent in a society like India where there's a formalized caste system ensuring that people find and maintain only their own level and poor women are lucky to be granted even that.

Opening with Lata Bai giving birth to her seventh child, another girl, this tale of the disenfranchised, rights-less women of small, backward, poor village India celebrates the strength and the love that gives these abused, maligned, and expendable women the courage to go on and to grasp for a better life. As her mother adds yet another female mouth to the family, Mamta, the eldest daughter, is dreaming and preparing for her very late but finally occurring marriage. She harbors romantic fantasies that even the example of her own life, being abused and neglected by her father because she was simply being raised to belong to another man, hasn't crushed. But the reality of her marriage, with her husband even selling her kidney and plotting to sell the other one as well, presses in on her and she must escape or die, despite knowing that all around her will condemn her for her choice regardless of the chilling alternative if she stayed and endured.

As Mamta finds her way in a harsh and unforgiving world, there is a second narrative running parallel to her story, one that will ultimately join her tale. This second plot line is that of Lokend, the younger son of the zamindar of Mamta's birth village. Lokend is a gentle soul, one who echoes the very best and kindest of the Hindu gods. He works for peace for the villagers but as is the case with so many of the selfless, he makes enemies who are determined to break him.

Someone Else's Garden is rife with brutality. Sadly it is not unrealistic brutality, nor is it gratuitous, included here not only to make the story realistic but also to shed light on the terrible fate of so many who cannot defend or speak for themselves. A large portion of the story contains unrelenting horrors and so the late glimmer of hope and progress unfortunately becomes unbelievable, a sort of fairytale ending to an otherwise un-fairytale-like story. There are a multitude of characters and it it hard, at the start, to keep them distinct in the reader's mind. Eventually it gets easier to sort them all out. Mamta's determination and the vestiges of hope that she manages to retain throughout her ordeals make her a very appealing character, one with whom the reader is sure to side. Her own calm acceptance of the customs and beliefs of her mother help the reader not to condemn these backwards thinking people but to understand the force of years of oppression and the centuries of tradition that have led to this mindset.

The double plot line and its ensuing complexity makes the novel move slowly for about the first half of the book. As necessary as the backstory is, there's just a bit too much detail bogging it down and making the reader work to get into a rhythm. The continual grim occurrences are hard to stomach but they serve their purpose. The sheer number of minor characters woven through the beginning also add to the challenge. But once you hit the middle of the book, the logjam breaks free and things flow more smoothly as the story picks up momentum. Those who have an interest in women's rights or rural India will be well served if they persevere with this one.

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About Me

A voracious reader, fledgling runner, and full time kiddie chauffeur.
If anyone out there wants to send me books for review (oh please don't fro me in that briar patch!), you can contact me at whitreidsmama (at) yahoo (dot) com. If you do write me there, put the blog name in the subject line or I'm liable to send the unread message to spam. My book review policy can be found here.